


Für Elise

by flailingthroughsanity



Category: Infinite (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-22
Updated: 2015-09-22
Packaged: 2018-04-22 21:44:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4851548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flailingthroughsanity/pseuds/flailingthroughsanity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sunggyu plays. Howon dances.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Für Elise

**Author's Note:**

> Nothing substantial. Just wanted to write something because I've been listening to too much classical music.

**e d# e d# e b d c a  
** _1784, September_

Misty, cold September afternoons can be whimsical in many subtle ways. A swath of grey covers the expanse of the sky; the sun blotted out by the leaden-tempered harbingers of rain. Veiled light, diaphanous — ethereal — like knives, words, cuts through the gloom and Sunggyu watches from the manor. An hour has passed, and the clock hand descends from two o’clock to three o’clock.

Bellowing clangs echo in the quiet, and Sunggyu absent-mindedly hums along the crescendos, breathy honeyed voice an accompaniment to the solemn bells.

In the distance, beyond the scarlet draperies, through the frosty panes, he can see the branches of the nearby oak trees drift along with the wind, sees the minute dances — the pirouettes, the kicks and the twirls — and it calls to mind a quiet contemplation, a conundrum of memories.

Voices, low and muffled, seep through the wooden floor, through the carpet, and Sunggyu finds solace in the distant laughter of servants, the bass chuckle of his valet, the soothing alto of his brother’s governess — Myungsoo will walk, soon, and he must learn to rely less on others. Beautiful, serene, his babe brother will soon come to know the life Sunggyu leads, led, and though Sunggyu could wish otherwise, banish the thought, he knows it is all in failure.

 _He’ll be a little lord, a princeling, my brother,_ Sunggyu thinks and Myungsoo’s dark hair and darker eyes and that carefree smile brings a smile to _his_ own face.

A creak, a subtle note on the wooden floor, pulls Sunggyu’s attention from his babe brother.

He sits straighter and the smile turns nostalgic — longs for the familiar, the could-have — and Sunggyu sees his reflection through the looking glass.

His own form gazes back at him, and Sunggyu peers beyond the small eyes, the high nose and the thin lips and he sees _him_.

Dark hair, as dark as Myungsoo’s — yet lighter in some odd way, almost surreal — frames an oval face, a sharp nose, sharper eyes and a smile that glows with a trace of mischievousness and innocence and Sunggyu watches him step closer, the pale afternoon light masking him in luminescence, like the stars and smoke.

“Howon,” Sunggyu speaks and Howon smiles, and it’s a beautiful smile — a smile just for him — and Howon steps even closer.

“Aren’t you going to play something?” Howon asks, and Sunggyu peers down at his hands, hands gently caressing the weathered keys of his family’s piano, an Érard, and he feels the glaze of use, of love and amusement singing through the notes as he presses a few keys in indolence.

“Your favourite?” Sunggyu asks and Howon laughs, and it’s whispy, quiet — like him — a gorge of a difference from Dongwoo’s, a bass laughter that promises to liven the spirits. Sunggyu smiles to himself and he begins to play.

He closes his eyes, loses himself in the familiarity of the notes, of the crescendos, in the intimacy of the almost-silent steps that Howon does and Sunggyu needn’t open his eyes to imagine the fair man as he glides through the floor, flowing, cascading — beautiful — a strange Apollo draped in the gray light of a cold September afternoon.

Sunggyu plays. Howon dances.

**c e a b, e c b a  
** _1783, December_

It is a sorrowful night, darkling and grieving. Sunggyu stands by the tall window, a black coat clothing his frame, and he stands in silence — watching his father enter the parlor, and Taeyeon enters, his babe brother swathed in cloth as he slumbers in his governess’ arms.

It is a sorrowful night, and his father — wrought hackneyed and jaded — gestures to the Érard and he bows his head, bites his lips and he walks.

It is a sorrowful night, and he plays. For mother.

It is a sorrowful night, darkling and grieving, and he closes his eyes as the notes coo the silence, dances along the heaviness in all of their hearts and he could almost hear his mother’s light laughter, head tilted as she whispers “ _Sunggyu, take care of Myungsoo for me? Mother has to go.”_

His mother dies a second death that night, dies through the tears he knows track down his father’s stone face, through the blissful absence of thought in Myungsoo’s infantile slumber, through the swan song sung along an Érard.

He opens his eyes, and he gazes through the looking glass, and he sees another face painted in the flames crackling from the fireplace. It’s a servant, and there is a serene sort of sorrow to his expression, through the glaze in his dark eyes painted a fiery red, through the downward pull of his lips carved by firelight.

Sunggyu does not stop, chooses not to look away.

It is a sorrowful night, and there is shared loss in the distance between him and the servant.

∞

The flames hiss and Sunggyu turns to gaze at them, sat still upon the bench and he holds his silence, save for the tumult beyond the window panes.

His father had retired to his chambers after the song, and Taeyeon had brought his brother back to his own resting place and Sunggyu sits still, quiet, alone — the memory of his mother a whisper of winter in his ears.

“I never knew my mother,” a foreign voice breaks the silence and Sunggyu starts, but he refuses to turn, to acknowledge. Refuses to show the tears down his cheeks even to the shadows.

He glances beyond the piano and it’s the servant, the same one, from the evening.

He is painted in flames and light and Sunggyu finds him beautiful — a quaint, innocent beauty, beatified by the tender smile on his lips — and although he wishes to be angry, to rage at the smile, at the memory of his mother, at the coldness of his father, he relents to the quiet longing in his chest.

Sunggyu lowers his head, rests it upon the hard edge of the Érard. He hears the servant step closer and closer.

“Play something for me?” The man asks, and he is kind.

Sunggyu plays, and it’s a different song — a Bagatelle in A minor — and the notes are rife with life, yet they tip-toe on the line of longing, of the familiar, of home. It is a sonata, by a strange man in a strange country, written by deft hands and sung by deaf ears. It is a song of love, of sorrow, of hope.

Sunggyu closes his eyes as he plays, and the Bagatelle shadows the steps the man takes, the silent _fouettes_ and Sunggyu smiles, and his mother smiles and the night no longer is sorrowful.

Sunggyu plays.  The servant’s name is Howon, and he dances.

 **e d# e d# e b d c a**  
_1784, March_

“You are happier when you play that song, lord.” The governess says, and Sunggyu stills his hands and he turns his head to look at her. She gifts him a fond smile, and he remembers his mother.

Taeyeon is kind, and beautiful, in the way mothers are beautiful — in that touch of care, that glimmer of love in her eyes, on the affectionate smile she holds as Myungsoo reaches a small fist to rub against her cheek.

Taeyeon laughs, and it is fiddling and Sunggyu reaches to her with open arms.

She comes close, and Sunggyu holds his babe brother in his arms.

He is silent, enraptured by the look of wonderment in Myungsoo’s wide eyes and he feels only a great overpowering love for his babe brother and he remembers his mother and the promise he made. The promise a child had made, a promise kept through the years as he gazes into his own flesh and blood resting against his bosom.

“He also favors you playing that song, lord.” Taeyeon says with a smile and Sunggyu nods, unable to voice his understanding as he holds his brother close. He can’t speak, and as Myungsoo reaches for his nose and he feels the warmth beating with life, Sunggyu only wishes to carry him away — away from the sorrow, the coming of age, the test of time.

Myungsoo makes a sound, and it is happy and Sunggyu wonders at how an infant, no heavier than a book, could make him feel so much love.

Taeyeon takes Myungsoo back into her arms and Sunggyu returns to the piano, eyes downcast as he wills himself not to turn around and ask for Myungsoo again. He is a lord, an heir by his father, and he has to learn to be a man, a man strong enough to protect Myungsoo.

“Perhaps…again, my lord?” Taeyeon quietly voices the thought and Sunggyu looks through the looking glass, watches her kind eyes beneath her golden hair and there’s movement by the door.

Howon is there, and Sunggyu watches as he gifts a pensive gaze on the governess, to the clothed bundle that was his babe brother, and turns back to him.

He smiles.

Sunggyu smiles.

Taeyeon smiles.

He plays.

**c e a b, e c b a  
** _1784, June_

Sunggyu plays. Howon dances.

Yet, Howon dances in a way dances should refrain to be danced upon.

It is Spring, and the clock-hand descends from two o’clock to three, and the golden sunlight floods the parlor in a halo. Sunggyu plays and it is that song, that Bagatelle, that one sonata Howon danced once upon a December and the notes cry through the air.

He plays the keys, and Howon plays him.

Each note, each cry and Sunggyu wants to lean his head back as Howon’s faint touches ignite tendrils of flames inside him. Howon’s caresses are like the whisper of winds, and he trembles, his fingers shake, and he feels Howon’s breath across his nape.

He opens his eyes and he sees Howon through the looking glass and Sunggyu stifles a cry as the servant’s lips trace down his throat. Fingers pirouette lightly against the bare skin of his arms and Howon opens his eyes, gazes into Sunggyu’s — dark, warm, a fire in a winter storm — and Sunggyu lets his eyes close as Howon’s lips swathe wisplike across his skin.

“My Érard,” Howon whispers, and the traces of want and need glides across his ears and Sunggyu’s hands still, the notes crashing into a dark clang as he mewls, Howon’s teeth stroking the lobe. “My fair Érard.”

Sunggyu lets his head fall, eyes closed in the thrilling ecstasy, bares his throat and Howon trails a kiss against the beating pulse.

Howon plays. Sunggyu dances.

**b c d e, g f e d, e e d c, e d c e;  
** _1784, August_

The sonata continues.

Sunggyu plays. Howon dances.

A note, a step, an arpeggio, a _fouette_.

A minor. A caress.

E major. A breath.

C minor. A whisper of love.

Sunggyu plays. Howon dances.

He dances and dances and Sunggyu plays and plays and Howon sails across the glass, across the window panes and each note is an adoring partner, a fervent lover and Sunggyu is the eternal keeper.

Howon dances, and the notes are his lover and Sunggyu feels no jealousy.

Theirs is a song of love, of sorrow, of hope — a sonata of a strange man, written by deft hands and sung by deaf ears. It is a song felt in hearts of men, wrought in loss and joy.

Sunggyu plays. Howon dances.

G major. A kiss.

**e d# e d# e b d c a  
** _1784, September_

Misty, cold September afternoons can be whimsical in many subtle ways. A swath of grey covers the expanse of the sky; the sun blotted out by the leaden-tempered harbingers of rain. Veiled light, diaphanous — ethereal — like knives, words, cuts through the gloom and Sunggyu watches from the manor. An hour has passed, and the clock hand descends from two o’clock to three o’clock.

Bellowing clangs echo in the quiet, and Sunggyu absent-mindedly hums along the crescendos, breathy honeyed voice an accompaniment to the solemn bells.

“Aren’t you going to play something?” Howon asks, and Sunggyu peers down at his hands, hands gently caressing the weathered keys of his family’s piano, an Érard, and he feels the glaze of use, of love and amusement singing through the notes as he presses a few keys in indolence.

A look of shared secrecy glimmers in Howon’s eyes and Sunggyu smiles all the same.

He plays and, like the unchanging advent of winter, Howon dances.

Sunggyu closes his eyes, and he imagines: Howon’s lithe form dancing with his notes, a revolving ghost whistling across the glass — it is a sonata of sorrow, and Sunggyu opens his eyes.

Howon dances, and as A minor dances to E major, Sunggyu longs for Howon, eyes trailing the gossamer figure through the looking glass. Howon laughs as he twirls, a _fouette_ , _déboulé_ , _dégagé_. Sunggyu bows his head as he hears Howon traipse behind him, slowing down as Sunggyu ends his piece.

He looks up and Howon smiles at him through the looking glass.

It is a Bagatelle in A minor.

A song of love, of sorrow, of hope — of longing, of the could-have.

It is a sonata by a strange man from a strange country.

Written by deft hands, sung by deaf ears.

Played by a boy longing for his mother, danced by a ghost wrought from the loneliness.

 **c e a b, e c b a**  
  



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